


Irrbloss

by Stonestrewn



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Ignis Fatuus, Irrbloss, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Swedish folklore, Will O' The Wisp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 09:53:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1546559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stonestrewn/pseuds/Stonestrewn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fia has always believed in her grandmother's stories of other folk, of the beings in folklore and myth, but when she finally encounters one of them the meeting isn't quite what she imagined. The creature is small and surly, brusque, ugly and utterly inhuman. </p>
<p>Fia is in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Irrbloss

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a femslash meme I did on tumblr back in February.

When Fia spotted the light she forgot all about the night wind worming its way through the stitches of her sweater and the bog water seeping through her sneakers. She took a deep breath, tightened her scarf and let the flickering flame lead her off the path.

_Irrbloss,_ she thought. She thought  _wisp, lyktgubbe, ignis fatuus_ and  _finally._

 

The moon wasn’t out. Neither were the stars. The sky was a deep dark cover of cloud and Fia could see very little in front of her. She tried best as she could to feel out the stability of the ground before she put her full weight on a forward step, but a couple of times her foot sank into the sucking soft plant-matter and she had to use all her strength to pull it out, panic rising in her throat.

She didn’t know how long she spent walking with her eyes on the little light bobbing up ahead, always well out of reach but never so far she might risk losing it. After a while the darkness in front of her thickened – she was nearing the edge of the forest, getting close to solid ground. Fia slowed her pace. She glanced behind her. The mire stretched wide out there, she could make out the sullen gleam of the water. She was definitely being led back. Fia came to a halt.

She clenched her fists, gathered courage.

“Hey,” she called, cringed at the brusqueness of her tone and started over: “Um, I mean. Excuse me?”

Her voice sounded sharp, cutting through the night and the whispering wind in the treetops like the serrated edge of a knife. The light bobbed and dimmed until barely visible. For a fearful moment Fia thought it was about to go out, but then it flared, brighter than before, and stopped. Fia’s heart thrummed in her chest.

“Hello?” she tried again. “I think I know what you’re doing and I appreciate it but I don’t need a way back to dry land, thanks. I’d like to talk? If it’s possible?”

She waited. The light hung still, as if waiting, too.

“Can you hear me?”

The light started moving again. It leapt towards her and then swung back in an arch. It repeated the motion, again and again, like a hand waving for her to come join it.  

“Thanks, I mean it, but I’m seriously good,” Fia said, hands cupped around her mouth to help carry the sound over the mire. “I was kind of looking for you, actually.”  

She held her breath, anxiously wishing the light to remain. When it did, and began moving back towards her, she was too tense to fill her lungs completely, taking air in short, nervous gasps.  

The light came nearer and near. When it was less than ten meters away Fia thought she spotted something moving beneath it, a small figure trudging effortlessly over the peat. As the seconds passed and the distance shrunk the figure became clearer and soon enough Fia could establish that, to her surprise and delight, there was a small creature directing the light floating over its head.

They stood only as tall as Fia’s knees. Their lithe body, limbs like twigs, was dressed in what seemed like old, gray rags at first glance, but a closer look showed that the ragged dress were layers of lichen, the scraggly threads growing from their shoulders, back and chest. Their face was gray as well, lined and coarse like the trunk of an old tree. In between the deepest of the creases sat two eyes that mostly likened two pieces of coal, black and matte. In contrast to the dried and withered look of the rest of them, the creature’s hair was white as snow and soft as cottongrass, it framed their face like a cloud.

They took another step towards Fia, peering up at her.

“What’s your name?” they said.

“Sofia,” Fia responded eagerly. “Everyone calls me Fia.”

As soon as she had said it the little light-bearer’s face scrunched up in outrage.

“Tadpoles and toadfoot, girl! Don’t go telling folk your name if you don’t want to lose it, and your mind with it.”

“…Oh.” Fia put her hands over her mouth. She blushed. “Oh, no,” she whispered, and the light-bearer snorted.

“Stop your fretting. You return home, and I will let go and leave be.”

The bearer’s words were surprisingly soft, the timbre surprisingly human.

“No,” Fia said. “I won’t.”

“Go!” the bearer growled, and now all the humanity had left her voice, it crashed into Fia’s eardrums like the crack of a mountain tearing, it scraped like stone on stone.

Fia plopped down on a high tussock and crossed her arms over her chest.

“I’m  _not_  going.”

The wet grass immediately soaked through her pants and underwear. She would have gotten back up, but the way her knees shook she didn’t want to risk her legs giving out from under her. The bearer’s voice still reverberated in her bones, slackened her tendons and made her muscles feel like jelly.  

The bearer shook their head.

“Sandworms and salamanders, girl. You’re too pretty to be ever-wandering this old bog at night.”

“ _You’re_ too pretty for that,” Fia shot back.

The look she got for that was granite-hard. Fia flinched a little under the onslaught of those little black eyes and was entirely unprepared for when the bearer leapt two whole feet into the air and onto Fia’s lap.

Fia went stiff.

“Um, what-“ she started, but the bearer cut her off, glaring at her face.  

“Just wanted to see if you had eyes in your head. Hard to believe it, the nonsense you go babble.”

They stood broad-legged, one foot on each of her thighs. The soles were warm and the weight of them was so tangible, so surely and irrevocably  _there,_ and happiness bubbled up from within Fia and spread across her face. The bearer frowned.

“Are you sitting there laughing at me, you frog-fart of a girl?”

“No! No, I just-“ Fia said, shaking her head. “My grandma used to tell me about seeing…  _folk_ , I guess, like you. When she was young. And I always thought there was a grain of truth in those stories, I always  _knew,_  and now I’m here and it all really is true and- and I’m just happy. That’s all. I’m so happy I’m talking to you right now.”

The bearer snorted but said nothing.

“What pronouns do you take?” Fia asked. The bearer remained quiet, but Fia persevered.

“Like,” she said, “When people talk about me I want them to say ‘she’. If I talk about you, what words should I use?”

“That,” the bearer said, after a minute of chewing her lips. “Those there, me, too.”

“Oh, you were a woman?” Fia asked, then paled. “Oh god, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t assume…”

 “Woman is right,” the bearer said, not unkindly.

“Really? I mean, I’ve heard lyktgubbar used to be land surveyors who messed up on the job.”

“Don’t have to be that to measure wrong and get the unrest.”

“I guess not.”

Fia hesitated for a few moments, picking at a cuticle.

“Would it be rude if I asked for your name?”

The bearer bared her teeth and Fia put her hands up in apology.

“Okay, sorry.”  

 She winced when the bearer scratched the fabric of her jeans with her long, claw-sharp toenails.

“Couldn’t tell you my name even if I would,” the bearer said. “Don’t have it anymore.”

“How… what?”

“Vitorm took it.”

It could have been just the chill of the wind and her soaked pants, but the name sent a shiver down Fia’s spine.  

“Who’s that?”

“You don’t know Vitorm?” the bearer said. Her forehead was creased with even more and much angrier wrinkles. “Vitorm is the snake king. He is long and white and full of poison, and he swallowed my name away from me. It lies buried in his guts, now.”

“Wow,” Fia said. “That sounds really gross.”

“Yes,” the bearer agreed solemnly. She looked sad. Her light had faded a bit and it deepened the shadows under her eyes, hollowed out her cheeks.

Fia tried to come up with something consoling when a sudden thought made her gasp.

“I’m supposed to go get it!” she said. “I mean, this is it, right? This is my task. You’re sending me on a quest! Right?”

“Quest.” The bearer pronounced the word like it tasted foul. “Is that what the young time calls it?” she said, but she didn’t deny it and Fia leaned forward, clutching her scarf in hands cramped with hope.

“I’ll get your name back, just show me the way to Vitorm and I swear I will.”

“Suppose you’d want a reward for doing that,” the bearer said. “Princess and half the kingdom, as it goes?”

Fia laughed.

“The princess got married three years ago. It was this  _huge_  event where they closed off like the entire capital.”

“Huh. How about that.” The bearer scoffed and tramped her feet, digging her sharp heels into Fia’s thighs. “What do you want then? Need to name it, or the deal’s not done.”

“I don’t know,” Fia said. “I mean, I can’t think of anything. I don’t want to ask for something that’s going to be trouble for you.”

The bearer looked into the night. She squinted her coaly eyes into thin slits and worried her leathery lips with her little pebble teeth. The lantern sank while she thought, lower and lower, until it almost rested on top of Fia’s head.

“Kill Vitorm,” the bearer said slowly, “and I will share my name with you.”

Fia nodded so hard she almost slid off the tussock.

“Yes! Yes, thank you, I promise I’ll get it back for you.”

The bearer smiled, then, she looked into Fia’s eyes and she smiled, and the lines on her face thinned to cobwebs as she did, a fine, exquisite pattern, and her teeth shone under the lantern and her white hair caught the light - the entire rainbow shimmered in the strands.  Something small and hot and precious fluttered to life inside Fia’s chest.

The bearer grimaced.

“Blisters and boils, girl,” she spat. “Don’t sit there and fall in love with me! Get your rump off the grass and let’s be on before we catch a nasty bout of dawnlight.”

And with that she jumped down from Fia’s lap and set out over the bog, light bobbing overhead.  Fia hurried to her feet, tightened her scarf and followed the flickering flame. 


End file.
